Why Elvis Rarely Drank

Outside of his legendary career in music, Elvis Presley was also known for his equally legendary diet. Take a look at the things Presley loved to eat and drink, however, and you'll notice something missing, especially for a rock star: booze. Presley wasn't particularly fond of drinking, and according to the 1986 book "Elvis and Gladys: The Genesis of the King," one of the reasons why he disliked alcohol was that his mother, Gladys, would always warn him of its dangers.

In his book "Elvis, My Brother," Presley's stepbrother, Billy Stanley, wrote that the singer didn't even like seeing people walking around Graceland with beer cans in their hands. While the rule wasn't as strict as Presley's total ban on fish in Graceland — he had a bar at the mansion for guests — his reasons for feeling so strongly about alcohol were valid. Stanley said that Presley blamed alcohol for the hepatitis and liver failure that contributed to his mother's death in 1958, and that he'd seen many musicians have their lives ruined by drinking.

Presley hadn't completely sworn off alcohol, however. In the book, Stanley also recounted the one time he'd ever seen Elvis drunk. One evening, Presley was given a margarita and enjoyed it so much that he "drank them down like soda pop." He'd gotten so boozed that he accidentally sent someone flying into furniture while dancing. After the incident, Presley would also occasionally have a glass of wine with his wife, Priscilla, because she liked it.

According to Fred L. Worth's 1988 book, "Elvis: His Life from A to Z," Pepsi was Elvis Presley's favorite soft drink. Presley reportedly required that Graceland always be stocked with one case of Pepsi (via History.com), which at the time sported a drastically different logo from what we know today. It seems that Pepsi was a part of The King's life as more than just a drink, too; Worth wrote that Presley's grandfather, Jessie, once worked as a night watchman at a Pepsi plant, and that the soda was the inspiration for Elvis' 1957 hit, "All Shook Up."

It appears that Presley was also a huge fan of Gatorade. Archival footage from his Las Vegas residency in the '70s shows that the sports drink was basically a part of the act, with Presley making the same jokes for the crowd nearly every time he needed to rehydrate with Gatorade. He'd parrot the claim that Gatorade was 12 times more effective than water, which is why he'd need to hurry with finishing the show after drinking it. That claim, of course, isn't entirely accurate. One of the things people should know about Gatorade is that it's primarily better than water in replenishing electrolytes lost through heavy sweating. There's no real advantage when it comes to basic rehydration (via Medical University of South Carolina).